


Careful

by the_authors_exploits



Series: Memories Divided by Pain [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, blood mention, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8199587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: [kerfəl] adjective1. making sure of avoiding potential danger, mishap, or harm; cautious2. anxious to protect (something) from harm or loss3. done with or showing thought and attention





	

Damian’s life has always been one of caution and strategy, delicately playing games in Ra’s’ compound, against trainers and teachers and family alike. He had thought things might change with his father, and he had been proven right when his father insisted upon communication and kindness, instead of brutality and damaging espionage. And while Father still had his own communication issues, things were easier for a while.

And then Damian meets Jason in that warehouse, when the elder one went through a flashback in the middle of a fire fight.

Damian retracts; he collects, but he doesn’t speak. He scours the library for books he recognizes, stacks them in his room, he searches the internet for recipes that he never learned, asks Pennyworth for aid in making them until they are exactly how Damian remembers… He doesn’t ask Drake for aid in tracking Jason down, only takes his laptop and taps away.

Damian’s life wasn’t so reclusive as to not know the inner workings of technology; technology is everywhere, and Damian knows how to work it. He checks the CCTV around the slums, whatever cameras he can find; he’s tempted to find a way to control people’s phones, on the off chance he’ll spot Jason, but Father is insistent upon respecting civilians.

Damian stays silent; his mind is racing, but outwardly he is calm and stoic. Inside, he is plotting, and outside he is hiding.

Damian’s life has always been a balancing act of caution; he had thought that might change, one day, but here at Wayne Manor it’s as dangerous as anywhere else. Perhaps it’s a perceived danger, though; after all, he’s not entirely sure why it would be bad to share his knowledge of Jason.

Either way, it doesn’t matter; Damian acts through caution.

Jason, in contrast, does not act through caution; at least, not as cautious as Damian. He hides his tracks well, but when Damian does spot him–on camera footage or out on patrol—he’s reckless; he twists through the shooting gang members, ducking and running and teasing, laughing crazily when a bullet grazes his arm. He’s far from cautious.

So Damian ups himself; he impulsively buys first aid kits, daring Alfred to say anything when he sets them in the shopping cart, and he requests his own computers. So much so that he rivals the Batcave’s setup, and when Barbara is told of Damian’s new interest she too comments that he’ll soon rival her.

He doesn’t respond; he’s becoming worse than Tim, chugging coffee and sweets to stay awake, typing long into the night, and finally Father sits him down for a talk.

“Damian, this isn’t like you,” he says. “Is something going on? Do you want to talk about it?”

And Damian blinks at him; “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father.”

“I’m talking about the books you’ve taken from the library, the computers, the first aid kits. Damian, we can talk about this.”

Still, Damian just blinks; he stands, brushes his shirt, and nods respectfully at his father. “There’s nothing to discuss, Father; I am well.”

For all his caution in not broaching the subject of Jason, he’s less cautious about what he’s been doing; he pulls away. He leaves his computers until late at night, long past Father and Alfred have gone to bed, and he continues to track and categorize; an apartment on the docks, a small abandoned house on the outskirts of the city, a meeting place in a warehouse…

It all comes to a head one night, when Damian is out on patrol in Jason’s territory; it’s not that they’ve agree to give Jason a piece of Gotham, rather that they ignore what he does and stay away from the docks and warehouse district when necessary, the drug lords and small gangs of Gotham.

Damian doesn’t ignore Jason.

He’s perched on the gutter of an abandoned office building, half of the widows smashed, graffiti drying on the walls, when he hears the gunfire; he perks up, eyeing the flashes of light, listens to the yells, to the shouts and curses, and he draws his hood up, unsheathes his katana, and runs for the fight.

He comes upon the scene, several different enemies wielding automatic pistols and rifles, firing off at the cackling Red Hood who skirts their group; Damian twists his katana and watches for a moment, assesses, and jumps down. He tosses a birdarang, takes out two shooters, dodges back into the shadows and does it all over again; Jason’s saying something, something about crossing him and foolishness, monologuing the slightest bit and Damian rolls his eyes.

Jason’s just preparing for a twisting kick off a wall when two bullets strike; both go into his thigh, blood spurts, and he tumbles from his jump. He rolls across the floor, lifts himself onto his arms, and pulls a gun from its holster; but Damian sees his mistake. He’s out in the open, woozy from pain, and everyone has a clear shot of him.

They take it.

With a short lived cry, Jason goes down and his gun clatters away to Damian’s feet, hidden in the shadows; Damian snatches it and goes running. He rushes through the fog of Gotham, the smoke of a gunfight, and halts above Jason; he hears him wheezing, one hand curled around his ribs, another—his gun hand—is slightly mangled and bleeding.

Damian tips his sword over Jason’s prone body, eyeing each enemy in turn, calculating and planning, and grips the gun tighter.

“It’s Robin!” one shouts, and the others hesitate; they eye the roofs, the stars, and then they’re running away.

Fine; let them fear Batman.

Damian goes down on his knee and sheathes his sword, reaching out for Jason with a question on his tongue; there’s a hand suddenly latched about his throat, the mangled one, blood seeping into the color of his uniform, and Red Hood presses a knife under his chin.

“What are you doing here, little bird?”

Damian can still breathe; Jason isn’t so cruel as to suffocate him. Damian glances down to his ribs; body armor. He hadn’t been shot, but the impact was still painful. “Which safehouse are you in?” Damian says in lieu of an answer; when Jason tips his head, Damian explains. “You are injured.”

He glances momentarily down at himself and his muscles twitch; he returns his attention to Damian. “Where’s Batman?”

“I’d assume the sewers since Killer Croc is loose.”

Silence; then, “Why aren’t you with him?” He’s lost that threatening edge to his voice, his hands loosening, but Damian doesn’t move to dislodge the grip.

Damian thinks about his question for a moment; why did he ditch Father? There are many answers; because Killer Croc didn’t go into the sewers, because there was Red Robin to watch Batman’s back, because Nightwing was searching the streets, because Oracle had told him Red Hood was active… “This seemed more important.”

His grip tightens for a moment before he lets Robin go completely; he tucks his knife away, wrestles the gun from Damian’s hands, and holsters that too. Finally, the emotionless hood is turned back on Damian and they stare each other down for a moment. Finally, Jason sighs and reaches out. “It’s on the south side of the docks; my safehouse.”

So Damian slides his arm around Jason, pulls Jason’s offered arm across his shoulders, and stands; they weave in and out of half abandoned buildings, across the shadows in between, until they reach a rundown apartment building. Every other window is lighted up, and Jason is beginning to put more weight on Damian the longer they walk; his leg, the one that had been shot, has been leaving a steady trail that Damian will have to go back and clean up.

“Which apartment?”

“Fire escape,” Jason directs. “In the back, third floor.”

The fire escape doesn’t creak, and it isn’t unsteady; Damian spots new bolts going into the wall, and there’s a new window on one apartment, another with an expensive looking pair of curtains. Neither one is Jason’s.

Getting into Jason’s apartment is easy; patching him up is less so. He fights Damian, tells him to leave, yells at him when he goes rifling through the bathroom cupboard for a first aid kit.

“Get the hell out! You did your good deed for the night, now leave!” His shoulders are tense, hunching into himself, and Damian has to remind himself to breathe when he realizes he’s the perceived threat.

“I’m not going to leave you to bleed out.” Damian tosses the medical kit on the couch, where he deposited Jason earlier, and pops it open to rifle through. “Did the bullets go through?”

Jason twists his leg, pauses, and glares when he realizes he obeyed without hesitation. “Yes; both of them are.” Jason grabs the tweezers and stitching needles from Damian. “You can go.”

With a moment to stare each other down, Damian stands and goes for the kitchen; he leaves Jason a semblance of privacy to dig the bullets out, to patch himself up, while Damian goes rifling through his cupboards for a cup. He does so loudly, opening and closing the drawers and doors, shifting items, both in case Jason cries out it can be muffled and so Jason can keep track of his whereabouts; Jason’s guarded, and any silence might be considered suspicious.

Damian finds a cup, goes looking for a bottle or jug of water in the fridge; “Where’s your water?”

“Tap,” Jason grits back, and Damian makes a face at the faucet. Who knows what sort of chemicals run through Gotham’s water system.

He pours a cup of orange juice and pauses before going back into the living room; there’s a spot of blood on the coffee table, two shiny pieces of metal sitting in the congealing puddle, and Jason is finishing up stitching the second hole. He’s awkward about it, hands shaking, the mangled one not doing much; Damian stands still after he sets the juice down.

He wants to do it, if only because of Jason’s incompetence at the moment, but he knows better; he lets Jason finish, sit back with the cup in his hand and sweat drying on his forehead. He abandoned his getup shortly after they entered, his helmet and mask and body armor.

He gulps down the juice and Damian grabs a bandage wrap, takes a seat on the coffee table, and holds a hand out expectantly.

“Give me your hand.”

Jason does; he shuts his eyes tight as Damian checks his hand, pulls out any debris that might have gotten lodged in his torn skin, and pieces his hand back together slowly. The gun hadn’t blown up in his hand when he was shot, but the hand is still a mess; Damian finally wraps it with gauze.

“You’ll need to go to the hospital.”

“Later,” Jason answers, and Damian shakes out two painkillers and one sedative pill, in full view of Jason; Jason swallows them with the last of his juice. “You should go.”

“Tomorrow,” is his answer as he goes about tidying the apartment; he’s not sure how to explain it’s because he’s scared something might happen, that he doesn’t want Jason to disappear just yet.

Jason, surprisingly, doesn’t say anything; he watches Damian flit about, wiping away the blood, organizing his med kit, returning the dirty cup to the kitchen—going so far as to rinse it, too. Jason rubs at his eyes; the boy moves in a familiar cadence, but Jason hasn’t studied him enough to have memorized each move.

He’s just tired. “Fine,” he says, standing unsteadily, but Robin just blinks at him. “Then I’m going to bed.”

Damian waits until he’s actually fallen sleep, curled up on his side, his leg elevated on a pillow and his mangled hand stretched out in front of him on another, snoring ever so softly; the drugs have worked to relax him, cause him to sleep when he's suspicious, and Damian leaves to burn the blood trail; it doesn’t take very long before he’s settled quietly on the foot of Jason’s bed, katana in his lap and hands holding it loosely but readily

It’s also not long before Red Robin shows up.

Red Robin stands in the moonlight streaming from the window, silhouetted in the doorway of the bedroom; he’s relaxed, eyeing Jason snoring on the bed, and then turns his calculating gaze on Damian at the foot of the bed. “There’s something you aren’t telling us.”

Damian doesn’t say anything; he tightens his grip on the sword in his hand.

“Is he ok?”

He spares a quick glance at the young adult; he’s sleeping easily, deeply, and Damian turns back to look at Tim. “He got shot.”

Red Robin swallows loudly; “that hand doesn’t look good.”

“He’ll go to a hospital when he’s ready.”

“He might lose the hand.”

Damian doesn’t say anything; he shifts his grip on the katana, holds it tight. “He’ll go when he’s ready.” He’ll be ready in the morning, when Damian has left and Jason can go at his own pace, his own time, his own strength; he’ll be fine until then. “He’ll go when he’s ready.”

Red Robin keeps watching Jason, and it begins to unnerve Damian; he can’t really remember anyone looking at Jason for that long and having good intentions. With heavy movements, he loudly unsheathes his sword.

“You should go,” Damian just barely stops himself from snarling. “Before you wake him up.”

Red Robin eyes Damian now, watching him closely. “You should come home; Batman is worried.”

Damian shifts deeper into the mattress, as if daring Red Robin to drag him away; “I will, eventually.”

Red Robin hesitates a moment longer, and then he goes for the window. “You need to trust us, Damian; whatever you aren’t telling us… We need to know.” He vanishes out the way he came.

Jason breathes in, out, in again and Damian has to be doubly careful, for both their sake.


End file.
